baking genius and little people genius

salome

kristin and i at the sea in denmark

fun with lise and elise

who knew you could make cookies with only an egg, sugar, and peanut butter? genius, i tell you. it has been a productive day. when we moved into our apartment two years ago, we owned nothing, so we decided to go bohemian and just put mattresses and pillows on the floor. last year we upgraded to a cool green velour couch. now we have wood floors, a black leather couch, and today we put tall legs on our rapidly dying ikea table. we are turning into adults!
sometimes coming back to norway can be a difficult transition, but this time... ingen problemer. language is coming back and i can actually sit through a whole conversation and understand what´s being said. i´ve been traveling a lot, but am back in skien for the weekend and loving it. i spent the night with the ladies of house, drinking coffee and watching a very fun movie, "saving grace." today i´ve decorated, baked, done laundry, and watched an episode of gilmore girls.
i must share this: salome took my hand this morning as i was downstairs and asked, "kan jeg få oppe med deg?" (can i come up with you?) and i of course said yes. once upstairs we turned on the norwegian "løvenes longe/lion king" and sat watching the first scene. perhaps i´m a little emotional these days, but as the first song came on and simba was held up in the air, salome clasped her hands and exclaimed, "so cute" and i automatically began crying... uncontrollably! i looked over at kristin and she was also welling up. watching salome (2) so enthralled by the movie and then saying a phrase in english was just too much. so cute, indeed.

brain farts

my new temporary driver's license

i once read about woman who, after coming back from the mission field, was in the grocery store and very proud of herself because she had been able to complete the shopping. for those of you who have been overseas for an extended period of time, you know what i mean. it's just a bit difficult to make all those decisions and it can be quite overwhelming at times. but she completed it and as she was getting ready to pay, the cashier asked her "paper or plastic?" at that one question, the woman lost it - burst into tears and ran out of the store without her groceries.

i leave for norway on tuesday. before i moved to norway, i lived in the grand state of kentucky, thus i have a kentucky driver's license. the license will expire before i return to the states again, so i thought i would change it to a kansas license. i drove to the transportation office - 25 min. away and as i took my number and sat down, waiting my turn, i decided to get out the paperwork i needed. as i searched through the bag, i realized that i didn't even have my license with me!! so, i had to drive home again, grab the license and decided to take my passport just in case. i went back and luckily the nice man was able to help me (there are two people working at the office: the nice man and the mean lady. the mean lady gave me my first driver's test and glared the whole time). i pulled out the paper work - gave him my passport (which was needed), explained that i owned nothing, so i had nothing to show that i resided in kansas - just my tax statement. i told him i lived overseas and was a missionary and he just looked at me blankly. we talked a bit as he filled out the paper work... and then it all began. stupidities became flying out of my mouth - it was as if i had no control over my brain. when he told me "that will be $22" i asked him if he would take visa. he pointed to the sign over my head which said "no credit cards." i then asked him who to make the check out to. he then pointed to the sign taped to the desk "make checks payable to blahblahblah." i haven't written a check in years and my hand shook the entire time. i finally finished and proceeded to walk over to the chair where he would take my picture. i sat down and he began motioning towards him with his finger. so, i began moving forward in the chair. the more he motioned, the more the chair moved. finally he held up a pen and said, "you have to sign first." i got up, shaking and semi-laughing out of shear embarrassment. he looked at me, chuckling and said, "so, i guess things always change a bit when you come back." if you only knew, buddy.

chi-town fun

view of chicago from the bean

bethany and me in grant park

a little kiss for al roker

towing the jeep

woohoo for vacation! bethany and i went to chicago for a mini-vacation and we had so much fun! we drove from indy, stayed at a great hotel right across from the hancock building (and the cheesecake factory!), and spent hours walking around town, shopping, and drinking coffee. i love that scene from "the wedding planner" where they watch an old movie in the park and begin dancing. well, we got to watch "double indemnity" in the park with thousands of others. we brought picnic blankets, popcorn from garrett's, and just enjoyed ourselves for a couple hours. we also went to a concert in the park and listened to classical music for an hour. ravel's "bolero" was incredible. we also tried to go to the today show, but were too late, tried to find greektown, but found oprah's studio instead. the icing on the cake though was when i made the mistake of paying our parking fee hours before we were going to leave and as we got in the car to move it, it wouldn't start. we spent over an hour in the dark, hot parking plaza and finally were able to charge the battery. we had no choice though but to take me to the airport 5 hours early, so we wouldn't have to turn off the car again and run the chance of it not starting again.

so, we're on michigan ave - getting ready to turn on to lake shore (both very busy streets) when the car begins lurching and every dashboard light begins flashing. a little freaking out follows, but we managed to park the car in a tow zone/bus stop. not good. we went to barnes and noble (thank God for books and coffee!) and asked if they knew of any tow companies and bethy ended up walking a mile to a gas station. 4 hours after this whole ordeal began, a middle eastern man shows up with a tow truck, drives us through town, and drops up off at a shell station where we find out the jeeps needs a new alternator and battery. the L was right across the road from the station, so i even had a way to get to the airport in time. good memories.

the height of disgusting-ness

this is my brother-in-law's knee. a brown recluse spider bit him. when i saw it, i had flashbacks of a leprosy colony in india.

a shout out

a shout out to my friend, sara fisel. if you need a good laugh, read her blog. if only i could be more like you, sara.

so, i came back to the states expecting hot, humid weather and lots of time out in the sun. let's see. i believe it has rained 11 of the 13 days i've been here, so sun has been limited. in the past day we've had 12 inches of rain (30cm) and there are flood warnings in the surrounding areas. i went to see "evan almighty" today and since it was a saturday, people should have been out shopping. but it was as if we had walked into a ghost town. as i walked around downtown, i didn't see one person. all roads leading out and in (except for our road) to the town were closed. hmm, maybe impending doom is upon us?...

(there's a bridge under there)